Turkey today played down the possibility of an early attack on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq as Baghdad sent its vice-president to Ankara for urgent talks.

Amid warnings that Turkish military action could exacerbate what is already the Middle East's worst refugee crisis since the 1940s, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said a parliamentary green light did not necessarily mean that a military incursion was imminent.

The Turkish parliament is expected to agree tomorrow to Mr Erdogan's request for possible cross-border offensives into the semi-autonomous, oil-rich Kurdish region of Iraq. The prospect of military action by Nato's second-largest army helped push crude prices to a record high of over £43 ($88) a barrel today.

"I sincerely wish that this motion will never be applied. Passage of this motion does not mean an immediate incursion will follow, but we will act at the right time and under the right conditions," Mr Erdogan told his ruling Justice and Development (AK) party in a speech. "This is about self-defence."

To head off any action that might destabilise one of the country's few largely peaceful regions, Iraq's Sunni Arab vice-president, Tariq al-Hashemi, flew to Turkey for urgent talks.

The Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, also called for a "crisis cell" to meet today to monitor developments along the Turkish border.

"We are ready to have urgent talks with senior officials in the Turkish government to discuss all the pending issues and to give guarantees which would regulate relations between the two neighbouring countries," Mr Maliki's office said in a statement.

The US has urged Turkey, one of its key allies in the region, not to attack northern Iraq. But US-Turkish relations have taken a turn for the worse amid moves in Congress to recognise the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 as genocide.

Turkish military commanders have been clamouring for action after dozens of soldiers and civilians were killed in recent weeks by fighters from the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK). Turkey has long complained about the inability or unwillingness of the US and Iraq to rein in the estimated 3,000 Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq.

As Mr Hashemi headed to Turkey, the head of the UN's refugee agency warned that an incursion could worsen the region's refugee problem.

"I can only express our very deep concern about any development that might lead to meaningful displacements of populations in that sensitive area," said Antonio Guterres, the UN high commissioner for refugees.

On a visit to the EU, he also urged western nations to help Syria and Jordan cope with an influx of 4 million Iraqi refugees, and appealed to the EU not to close its borders to Iraqi asylum seekers.

The UN fears a Turkish cross-border offensive against Kurdish rebels could force thousands more people to flee northern Iraq.

"The northern governates, or Kurdistan, or whatever you want to call that area, has been the most stable area in Iraq," Mr Guterres said. "It is an area also where you will find Iraqis from the south and from central Iraq that went there to seek security, and of course we strongly hope that this relative security in Kurdistan will not be affected."